The top tier of 2024. Martin Benson, R.I.P.
20 favorites from 2024, 'Once Upon a Mattress' and 'Emma,' 'Home Alone-ly Hearts Club Band,' 'Oy!,' 'Bob's Holiday Office Party'.
Are you ready to count blessings again, or did that moment expire after Thanksgiving?
For anyone in Greater LA who relishes face-to-face, in-the-moment live theater, let’s be grateful for the plentiful activity on our area’s stages during 2024.
But first, of course, a complaint. I frequently meet Angelenos who, after hearing that I write about theater, immediately start describing their most recent (or upcoming) trip to New York to see Broadway shows. Often, they seem unaware of what’s happening on our own professional stages.
Sure, they might occasionally venture to Broadway exports at the downtown Ahmanson or the Pantages in Hollywood, thereby avoiding the cost of a trip to Broadway itself. Both venues are currently hosting Broadway tours — “Once Upon a Mattress” at the Ahmanson (see photo, above, and more details, below) and the umpteenth “Wicked” at the Pantages — yes, the original stage musical with both “parts” of the story, as opposed to the Part One-only movie currently playing on movie screens.
But what about the many LA-generated productions?
Maybe these Broadway devotees have been to the Mark Taper Forum or South Coast Repertory, but they’re also aware that these two pillars of our home-grown theatrical scene have yet to fully return to their pre-COVID level of activity. At the Taper, Center Theatre Group’s only new production in 2024 was another round of “American Idiot,” which it had produced previously at the Ahmanson (but fortunately this year’s version was different, added signing to the singing because of an alliance with Deaf West Theatre). The number of South Coast productions has grown recently but it’s still below the pre-COVID numbers. However, both companies promise to be much busier in 2025.
Meanwhile, most of the other 95% of Greater LA theater is already back on track. Sure, a few companies have yet to return, but others have been born.
Those who don’t live near Pasadena — and perhaps even some Pasadenans — might not realize that it’s currently the most fertile theatrical field in LA County, thanks to the Pasadena Playhouse, A Noise Within, Boston Court and relatively rare appearances of the South Pasadena Theater Workshop.
Six miles west of South Pasadena is Casitas Avenue, LA’s leading contemporary center for small theater. Its main venue is Atwater Village Theatre, where five companies co-exist in four spaces in a largely residential neighborhood — but it’s just a few doors up from another building that houses the Independent Shakespeare Company Studio (currently the home of a sold-out run of “A Christmas Carol”). The location seems almost intentionally obscure, perhaps to appease the residents in the nearby houses — or should we say “casitas”?
Please don’t forget the mostly midsize category of theaters. It’s all over the map: Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, East West Players in Little Tokyo, Latino Theater Company in downtown LA, the Colony Theatre in Burbank, International City Theatre in Long Beach, La Mirada Theatre (yes, in La Mirada, where the city government provides more than $10 million to support its civic theater, including more than $6 million for productions in the city’s 2024-2025 budget). Plus, in adjacent counties, Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, and Laguna Playhouse as well as South Coast Repertory in Orange County.
These spaces should be on every theater fan’s radar. And theatrical fireworks often ignite in many other smaller sites as well. I discuss whether any fireworks are sparking in what’s currently playing, lower in this post.
But first here are 20 of my favorites that opened in 2024, before December. The list is in alphabetical order, with links to what I wrote earlier about them. I chose these from the 140 productions I saw this year (a number nowhere near even half of the productions that were available for me to see). Note the variety of the locales where they were staged:
The Body’s Midnight, IAMA Theatre and Boston Court, at Boston Court in Pasadena
Clarkston, an Echo Theater production at Atwater Village Theatre
Company, at Pantages Theatre, presented by Broadway in Hollywood
Dido of Idaho, an Echo Theater production at Atwater Village Theatre
Duran DurAntony and Cleopatra, Troubadour Theater at Colony Theatre in Burbank
Fat Ham, at Geffen Playhouse in Westwood
Fiddler on the Roof, at La Mirada Theatre
A Girl Grows Wings, Organización Secreta Teatro, presented by Latino Theater Company at Los Angeles Theatre Center, downtown LA
Hitler’s Tasters, at Rogue Machine on Melrose
Kate, at Pasadena Playhouse
Keely and Du, a Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater production at Art of Acting Studio in Hollywood
Mercury, at Road Theatre in North Hollywood
Middle of the World, at Rogue Machine on Melrose
Misalliance, at A Noise Within in Pasadena
Pang Spa, a Chalk Repertory production at Atwater Village Theatre
The Skin of Our Teeth, A Noise Within in Pasadena
Stew, an Ebony Repertory production at Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Mid-City LA
Sukkot, a 6th Act production at Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz
Tartuffe: Born Again, at Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga
Unbroken Blossoms, East West Players in Little Tokyo, downtown LA.
A magnetic ‘Mattress’
Once upon a time (in 1960), the Broadway tour of the original “Once Upon a Mattress” musical played downtown LA’s long-since-demolished Biltmore Theater, with Dody Goodman in the role of Princess Winnifred instead of the original Broadway star, Carol Burnett. In some of the other notable casting changes between the Broadway and the LA casts, legendary silent-film master Buster Keaton played the mostly mute King Sextimus the Silent in LA instead of Jack Gilford, and Willy Switkes — my wife’s uncle! — played the Wizard instead of Robert Weil.
No, I was not there to see that production.
But I was at the Ahmanson Theatre last week as the latest Broadway revival of “Once Upon a Mattress” reached LA, this time with its sizzling star Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred, straight from the New York run that closed last month. Foster’s comic effervescence lives up to expectations. And she’s here with her equally proficient New York castmates Michael Urie as Prince Dauntless, Ana Gasteyer (a former LA Groundling and “Saturday Night Live” cast member) as Queen Aggravain, and David Patrick Kelly as King Sextimus.
Together, they truly transcend the limitations of the original book (by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer and Dean Fuller), although some of those limitations are still apparent even in this new adaptation by Amy Sherman-Palladino.
The story was inspired by the brief “The Princess and the Pea,” by Hans Christian Andersen — about a young woman who was tested to determine whether she could marry the prince. The queen arranged for “Winnifred” (to use the name in the musical) to sleep on a tower of mattresses, with a pea secretly placed near the bottom. If she couldn’t sleep well, she passed the test, because it meant she had sufficient “Sensitivity,” to quote the title of one of the musical’s songs by Mary Rodgers.
The main problem with the musical’s book is that secondary lovers (not mentioned in Andersen’s tale) are given almost as much time as the main characters, even though they’re not nearly as interesting, and even as we approach the end of the musical.
However, Foster more than makes up for the book’s deficiencies with her depiction of a woman who swam across the royal moat in order to vie for the princess title, arriving with leeches on her body and clothes. Listen to Foster belt Rodgers’ song in which this enterprising young woman loudly swears that she’s secretly “Shy.” It’s obvious why the prince would quickly become interested in this brash contender for his hand in marriage.
In fact, in this production — adapted and directed by women, Sherman-Palladino and Lear deBessonet, respectively, and with Winnifred and the queen dominating the events — “Mattress” looks like a musical that provided hints of the feminist movement that would explode in the decade after the 1960s. Yet it also debunks any old canard about feminists lacking a sense of humor.
By the way, the Wizard here is played by Kevin del Aguila, who co-wrote the TheaterWorksUSA production of “Cat Kid Comic Club: the Musical,” which Center Theatre Group is currently presenting at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. As with its “Dog Man” predecessor, it’s intended for kids aged 8-12, preferably those who already like Dav Pilkey’s comic-book series of the same name. I saw it, but because I’m not in the target audience or a parent of anyone in the target audience, I will offer no opinion.
But no mattresses or moats in ‘Emma’
Chance Theater in Anaheim and director Casey Long have revived their own 2018 production of another musical about young romances and would-be romances, but it could hardly be more different from “Once Upon a Mattress.” The source here is Austen, not Andersen.
“Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” based on her 1815 novel “Emma,” is essentially a chamber musical, and the Chance venue, with 144 seats, is the right size for it. The humor is much more subtle, much less physical. Paul Gordon’s quasi-conversational score occupies much of the running time (he also wrote the musical’s book). And the central character, far from being a bold adventurer like Winnifred in “Mattress,” is a wealthy, self-satisfied young woman who makes one mistake after another as she tries to micro-manage her friends’ — and her own — courtships, all within small-town English society more than 200 years ago.
I haven’t read Austen’s book in decades. At the Chance, I sometimes sensed an excess of plot strands following too many characters — this may be a chamber musical, but the ensemble is larger than a quartet. I’m not sure if someone who is more recently familiar with the book would find the musical easier to follow and/or if they might find it too superficial. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but I don’t expect it to be unforgettable.
And on to holiday hijinks
I’ll be brief about the show that I enjoyed the most this month, because from what I read on the Colony Theatre website, no remaining tickets are available at any of the remaining performances in Burbank.
I’m referring to “Troubies’ Home Alone-ly Hearts Club Band,” a Troubadour Theater mash-up of the story of the original “Home Alone” movie from 1990 (which is set during the Christmas season) with tunes — but mostly changed lyrics — from the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band” album from 1967.
Yes, Troubies mastermind Matt Walker stars as the movie’s…much, much younger “Kevin,” and the Winter Warlock makes her annual appearance. The hilarity is as intense as the Troubies production from earlier this year, “Duran DurAntony and Cleopatra,” which I included in my “top tier” list, above. But I don’t want the Troubies to get cocky over the fact that I laugh so much at just about every double-parody coupling they have ever produced.
The printed program for “Home Alone-ly…” includes a preview of a coming attraction. A small note urges us to “Celebrate 30 years of Troubie with us next summer at the Getty Villa as we present Oedipus the King, Mama!” This blend of Sophocles and Presley will revive (and almost certainly update) a 2009 production that was at the much smaller Falcon Theatre (now known as the Garry Marshall Theatre) in Burbank. The Getty Villa’s amphitheater not only has a lot more seats — than either the Falcon/Marshall or the Colony — for the growing hordes who want to see the Troubies, but it’s a lot more…Greek.
With “Home Alone-ly” we’re edging into actual Christmas shows, so let me make it clear that I have not seen any renditions of “A Christmas Carol” this year. But they’re out there, and the best-known productions probably aren’t very different from their earlier editions. I wrote about two of these three years ago. Richard Doyle is still playing Scrooge at South Coast Repertory. At A Noise Within, another larger-cast production, Geoff Elliott and Frederick Stuart are alternating as Scrooge (Stuart is scheduled for the Saturday and Monday performances and a Tuesday matinee, Elliott for all of the other remaining performances). Meanwhile, at Independent Shakespeare, David Melville still is playing Charles Dickens, the “Christmas Carol” author who enjoys performing all of the roles in his own work.
However, I have seen a few more specifically seasonal shows.
“Oy! to the World,” in the smaller of El Portal Theatre’s two spaces in NoHo, is described on the front of the program as “a celebration of the songs of Christmas all written by Jewish songwriters.” This could have been a pure revue, but writers Gregory Thirloway and Maurice Godin added a fictional framework in which Shelly (Jay Brian Winnick) has invited three younger performers to re-open his family’s old Catskills-style resort with a program devoted to the many holiday songs that were written by Jews. The fictional characters also introduce a few notes of rivalries and hints of potential relationships.
I enjoyed listening to Shelly’s information about the songwriters and to the songs, which are performed under the graceful musical direction of Gerald Sternbach at an onstage piano, with low-key choreography by Jeffrey Polk. But the fictional framework doesn’t add much to what could have been a somewhat shorter revue.
Finally, this year I returned to the mostly-annual “Bob’s Holiday Office Party,” for my third visit over the decades since its first appearance in 1995. This year it’s at the Odyssey Theatre in West LA, for the first time. The program cover refers to “L.A’s Smashed Hit,” and indeed the script by Joe Keyes and Rob Elk continues to depict a party, at an insurance office in small-town Iowa, that gradually turns from a gabby get-together into a sloshed grope-together.
The most interesting new note about the current version is that it’s set after the 2024 election. Bob (co-writer Elk) seems to be the only person in the room (or in the town?) who supported Kamala Harris, as opposed to those who are kneejerk MAGA and Elon Musk fans. It led me to wonder if Bob’s tentative thoughts about leaving town, ostensibly in order to attend a school for inventors in Des Moines, are at all influenced by the political climate around him.
Remembering Martin Benson
Martin Benson, who co-founded Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory with David Emmes, died in his Huntington Beach home, on November 30 at the age of 87.
Together, in 1964, Benson and Emmes were the sparkplugs behind SCR, one of America’s outstanding resident professional theaters and ground zero for the 20th-century expansion of the Orange County arts scene. They ran it for 46 years.
Benson directed 119 productions — nearly a fifth of the Tony-winning theater’s output over six decades. He won seven directing awards from Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle.
South Coast Repertory will dedicate the performance of “A Christmas Carol” on Friday to Benson, dimming the lights to celebrate his legacy, alongside many artists with longtime affiliations with the company.
Benson grew up in northern California, where he met Emmes at San Francisco State’s drama department. As related in Lawrence Christon’s book “Stepping Ahead,” a history of South Coast Repertory, Benson initially tried to become a Hollywood actor, an aspiration that collapsed into a job operating a forklift in a salvage yard in the city of Commerce. That’s when he remembered that his college friend Emmes was teaching in Long Beach. He called Emmes, they re-united, and in 1963 they produced a bare-bones “La Ronde” in a small Long Beach theater. Benson was living in his car near the theater, and he worked night shifts at a Jack in the Box, partially because of access to the fast food.
“La Ronde” was the beginning of their professional partnership, and it led to the first official South Coast production in Newport Beach in 1964. Then the company passed through a 75-seat space on the Balboa Peninsula and a 217-seat space in Costa Mesa, acquiring attention and kudos along the way, until it finally landed at its current location in 1978, aided by a gift of land from the Segerstrom family.
Increasingly SCR was joining the major leagues, and Benson was hitting some home runs. In 1982, LA Times critic Dan Sullivan assessed Benson’s staging of the Irish classic “The Playboy of the Western World” with lavish praise: “as rich and as true as Synge’s words, and also as funny. It warms you like whiskey, and there are no regrets the next day…This ‘Playboy of the Western World’ would draw plaudits at the Abbey [the Dublin theater where the play was first produced, in 1907] or any other stage in the world. If you are so foolish as to miss it, don’t come to me.”
The Tony award for outstanding regional theater arrived in 1988. But Benson and Emmes hardly rested on their laurels, continuing to run the artistic side of the theater together until 2011, when Marc Masterson became artistic director. David Ivers has been the company’s artistic director since 2019. Even now, Emmes and Benson are still listed as “founding artistic directors” on the “SCR Staff” webpage.
In Christon’s 2009 book, Benson described his partnership with Emmes with these words: “David’s more the proselytizer; I’m the inside man.” Now he will reside inside the memories of SCR friends and fans.
Here is South Coast Repertory’s website’s tribute to Benson. Here are obituaries of Benson that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the New York Times, the Culture OC website (by Christon) and the American Theatre website (by Jerry Patch, still SCR’s resident dramaturg). Here, much to my surprise, I found my own review of Christon’s “Stepping Ahead,” which was first published on the defunct LA Stage website.